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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
The Scots wholeheartedly embraced photography and mastered the technical challenges it presented but it was the partnership of David Octavius Hill (1802-70) and Robert Adamson (1821-48), formed a few years after the invention of photography, that was to take the medium to a new level, with the application of unsurpassed artistic creativity.
Their status in photography is emphatically confirmed by the photo-historians Helmut and Alison Gernsheim who wrote:
D. O. Hill and Robert Adamson are universally accorded first place in the annals of photography. The artistic spirit with which their photographs are imbued has impressed all succeeding generations, and it is indeed astonishing that in its very first years the new art should have reached its highest peak in the magnificent achievements of these two Scottish photographers.
Robert Adamson with his camera and D. O. Hill with his sketchpad (Figure 2.1) are shown in Hill's painting titled The First General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, Signing the Act of Separation and Deed of Demission at Tanfield, Edinburgh, 23 May 1843. The painting not only has a large title but it measures about 12 feet × 4 feet 8 inches (360 × 140 cm) and hangs in the offices of the Free Church of Scotland at the Mound, Edinburgh. It is normally referred to as the Disruption painting and, as will be explained shortly, this painting was the reason Hill and Adamson started to work together.
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